"Of Tlt's" I think was meant to be "of course" - autocorrect has outdone itself this time.  Like with anything, there are good things and bad things about the internet.  An example of good is that in websites such as Res Hist it lets people from different locations in different countries communicate.  Also, the internet has provided openings for the average citizen to have a voice - some singers promote themselves via the internet rather than having to wait to be signed up by a record company.  Whatever I may have said I don't want to inhibit freedom of speech.  Dirk sensibly said (when there was some discussion about British MP Boris Johnson saying the burka looked like a post box) that it was okay for BJ to express an opinion but that people should not misuse their right to free speech. (Dirk, if you read this and feel that I have misconstrued what you said please feel free to correct me).

Some members of the world's population (at least in those countries that have freedom of speech) seem to forget that with rights come responsibilities, even if they are not expressly stated in law.  I want to get away from conspiracy theories if I can because I spent some time examining them which in retrospect I could have spent more productively elsewhere but an adherence to some conspiracy theories does not harm other people - but some conspiracy theories could be harmful.  I've mentioned British media personality Katie Hopkins before - she has said she doesn't want to censor Twitter. She did make some false tweets (which incurred a trial following which she received a fine - to be fair she may have believed the tweets were true but they were not).  However she has received some nasty tweets herself including death threats.  https://youtu.be/vtAvQoyY4TE

Wise comments Lady. In French they say I have learned on the French historyforum: "je plussoie" (I second)
https://www.linternaute.fr/dictionnaire/fr/definition/plussoyer/

Kind regards from Paul.

Lady in retirement,


Lady,



Much can be said for freedom of speech and many are using it for their own publicity.



As an example at present the most successful contemporary populists in politics are Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.



Both of them are past masters who are managing to appeals stirring themes of nationalism and fears of persecution.



Take Boris Johnson’s comments about the niqab face veil worn by some Muslim women, which he wrongly called the burqa (the full-length face and body veil). For days, the dominant conversation was about the “burqa” itself, rather than about what Johnson was obviously doing – making political hay out of an issue he cares in earnest so little about that he couldn’t even muster the motivation to get the nomenclature right, just to drive the point home.



We fell for it, as we continue to do with Trump.



Instead of just listening or reading and accepting or rejecting their comments what needs to be done is to analyse their comments for their intent rather then accepting or rejecting the contents of their appeals.







Dirk

I agree that it is up to people to think sensibly about the actions and comments of those in the public eye.  Do people have access to critical thinking in their formative years these days?  I can remember having class debates even in my convent school - and there used to be a debate programme on children's TV back in the days when most senior schools were single sex where a subject would be debated between two schools (usually a boys' school and a girls' school - not Top of the Form which was a quiz programme).  I can't remember the title of the programme - or find it online.  There is a youth parliament in the UK www.ukyouthparliament.org.uk/ (and maybe in other countries) so some young people are still getting opportunities to practise oratory and debate.  Myself, I was probably always better at outlining a written argument than making a speech but that's just me.  Can critical thinking be taught as a skill - Edward de Bono thinks so?  If people don't want to think for themselves I'm nonplussed as to finding a solution but if anybody has any suggestions I'm open to hearing them.

Lady,

"Can critical thinking be taught as a skill - Edward de Bono thinks so?  If people don't want to think for themselves I'm nonplussed as to finding a solution but if anybody has any suggestions I'm open to hearing them."

I watched the films and for me it wasn't what I awaited for...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_de_Bono

To chalenge such a man is "adventerous" , but in my opinion he can't sell his stuff to the common man.


Personally I find more in the following approach:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/thoughts-thinking/201804/no-such-thing-good-critical-thinking
From this site:
Leading on from my last piece, which discussed the importance, in some contexts, of CT for the purpose of being right, in most cases, it’s not about being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. It’s about the process. For example, if you believe you have thought critically but your answer is wrong, then there’s a good chance that you haven’t thought critically. However, if you acknowledge uncertainty and that your stance might be falsified, then you’re on the right track. On the other hand, people are often right about some things, but fail to conduct CT regarding that ‘thing’.  Just because they’re right, doesn’t mean they got to ‘being right’ through CT.
And:
Again, CT is a process. Imagine you are presented a bundle of information on the topic. To think critically about the information, you need to:
Analyse - Tease out an argument structure and identify: a central claim, core reasons and objections to that claim; reasons and objections to the core propositions; and the sources of these propositions.

Evaluate – Examine the information and assess its: credibility; relevance to the central claim and other important propositions; logical strength; the balance of evidence; and the bias of the evidence.
Infer – Gather only the credible, relevant and logical evidence, while at the same time keeping an eye out for the balance and bias of the evidence; and draw a reasonable conclusion. To double-check your thinking, re-evaluate and see if the same conclusion should be drawn.  
This may seem straightforward, but to think critically, we must conduct reflective judgment at the same time. That is, while we conduct these three steps (i.e. analysis, evaluation and inference), we must not only acknowledge the nature, limits and certainty of both the information we’ve been provided and our own knowledge; but also how these factors can affect how we both defend our judgments and recognise that our views might be falsified by additional evidence obtained at a later time (see King & Kitchener, 1994). In a practice, this means that we must be open to admitting that we don’t know or that we might be wrong, even after we have spent a lot of time thinking about something. As I mentioned in my last piece, people love to be right; but they hate being wrong more. Personally, I’d much rather admit uncertainty to being wrong!

And I don't know why, perhaps my personality, or perhaps some teachers in the Roman-Catholic college taht I attended, let me always be critical, even about the obvious, till it was chalenged by something more founded and even then I remained critical till it was again challenged by as I found out something with more logical arguments.
But I have to admit that I was many times wrong with my critiques at the end but I don't find that a fault...if you are always critical, you will at least in some cases then not be deceived

That is really something we need nordmann's comments for...NORDMANN WHERE ARE YOU?

And as I see the grandchildren, but it could be exceptions, they have a good chunk of critical thinking... 

Kind regards from Paul.

Perhaps I should have said "analytical" thinking rather than "critical" thinking.  Of course, "critical" tends to have a pejorative tone nowadays but there can be "positive criticism".  The weird part of YouTube still finds me sometimes - and I'm not just thinking of the folk who believe Brigitte Bardot and Marilyn Monroe to have been transgendered men!*  Still, when I speculated about whether young people practised their debating skills etc I did not mean to belittle young people.  I did a course about 6 years ago and of course besides reference books and pamphlets, I had to use internet sources as well.  Of course, one had to cite one's references and not plagiarise.  With the world wide web available students have to be very thorough in their studies - it's not just a case of going to the library and sticking one's head in a book anymore (though I still like "real" books but must try and get to terms with my poor woman's Kindle (an Elonex) as I sometimes find books heavy to carry now).  When I go to the library unless I have a trolley I try to get paperbacks.

I went a bit off track above (I know I'm a bit prone to that) but I realise that young people studying now have 50 years' or so more knowledge to acquire than I did (not referring to the short course of 6 years ago here) back in my studying days.  Also, when the news media, for instance, pick out nuggets to suggest education has been "dumbed down" they always use the daftest answers from exam papers to make their point.  There was something in the papers a few years ago saying that a student had answered a question about who the architect who designed St Paul's Cathedral in London was.  One had written "Christopher Robin" (character from Winnie the Pooh).  But that was just one student and probably the others had given the correct answer "Christopher Wren" so an implication was being made that students were all "dumbing down" which may not have told the whole story.

Lady,

"I went a bit off track above (I know I'm a bit prone to that) but I realise that young people studying now have 50 years' or so more knowledge to acquire than I did (not referring to the short course of 6 years ago here) back in my studying days.  Also, when the news media, for instance, pick out nuggets to suggest education has been "dumbed down" they always use the daftest answers from exam papers to make their point.  There was something in the papers a few years ago saying that a student had answered a question about who the architect who designed St Paul's Cathedral in London was.  One had written "Christopher Robin" (character from Winnie the Pooh).  But that was just one student and probably the others had given the correct answer "Christopher Wren" so an implication was being made that students were all "dumbing down" which may not have told the whole story."

yes there was always doom thinking with exceptions presented as general thrends. But tabloid style seems to have conquered the world or was it always present, just that the canals to spread the tabloid style are immensely increased, but so are the serious press...but people are people in all times and they are more interested by the extravagance than the more boring real news?...and people are readers and money...the positive other side of the coin is however perhaps that by all that research, no secret is save anymore?...and can have consequences even in politics? We had here in Belgian politics some financial scandals recently, which costed the careers of several politicians...

Kind regards from Paul.

Oh yes, the old principle of divide and rule.  I'm not sure who owns it now but at one time a group of cable channels in the UK were part (to my understanding) of a media empire who also controlled some of the press.  My former next-door neighbour was not really computer savvy so used to still buy a physical newspaper and used to complain about the cost of a BBC licence because of something he had read in a newspaper from (I think at that time) the same empire.  I just looked online - a BBC licence costs £150.50 a year - divide by 12 that's (to two decimal places) £12.54 - looking online at the packages for the group of cable channels referred above (which to be fair may not be part of that media empire any longer) the cost is about £20 per month - so by my reckoning the BBC is cheaper.

Cellarmaster wrote:

Like the Fool, Trump is able to say things most people wouldn’t dare. Much of his rhetoric relies on insults, and many of these go places others fear to tread.

... Except Trump has never been playing the fool: he's the real deal. He's a narcisistic, intellectually-challenged, psychopathic, pathalogical liar.

However his problems in telling the difference between reality, and the fantasy that he has created for himself, are now so bad that even those that have served with him now freely admit this. Just a few days ago (9 August 2024) in a primetime interview on CNN, Trump's former National Security Advisor and UN Ambassador, John Bolton, made these comments in respose to the exposure of yet more lies Trump had said during a recent political speech:

"Trump can't tell the difference between what's true and what's false. It's not that he lies a lot - because to lie you have to do it consciously - he just can't tell the difference. So he makes up what he wants to say at any given time. If it happens to comport with what everyone else sees, well that's fine. But if it doesn't comport with anybody else, he doesn't really care, and he's had decades of getting away with it. So in his mind the truth is whatever he wants it to be."

Bolton has of course now fallen out with Trump and he's an utterly menacious shit in his own right, nevertheless while I never thought I'd find myself in agreement with him, on this occasion I think he's spot on.

None of this is new of course as many have been saying for years that Trump lives in an alternative reality and internationally he has surely always been regarded as intellectually subnormal. But he does seem to be getting worse. The recent recycled false claims and whining recriminations during his recent criminal trials, and his preposterous riffs about sharks, electricity and Hannibal Lecter on the campaign trail, certainly raised eyebrows but seemed to do little to blunt his momentum, at least not amongst his core MAGA supporters and the rightwing press. However for the past few weeks, ever since Biden has dropped out of the Presidential race, Trump has been increasingly lashing out, pushing lies, hurling insults, trafficking in racism and trotting out utter nonsense as he struggles to regain the narrative. And since he is no longer in competition against 'senile' Biden, he is now fully exposed. Meanwhile his speeches have become increasingly unhinged, rambling, slurred, stuttering and incoherrent. Frankly I think he's mentally ill, displaying, not just his usual narcissitic psychoses that have been displayed for years, but something more, such as dementia.